I was a magic geek when I was growing up. I couldn't do the tricks - both patience and manual dexterity are required - but I could purchase cheap paraphernalia from magic stores with which I failed to impress my friends, and I could read about the history of magic, which meant, inevitably, that I read about Houdini, the only magician who ever became world famous.

He consorted with presidents and movie stars. He filled theaters wherever he went, and his outdoor exhibitions drew thousands more. There is a picture in the new show about Houdini at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco that shows what appears to be the entire town square of Providence, R.I., filled with people all craning to get a look at a single man, suspended upside down from the roof of an office building, attempting to free himself from a straitjacket.

Houdini succeeded in that trick, of course. He always succeeded. He certainly used magic in his tricks, but more often, he used a combination of courage, strength and dexterity to free himself from whatever predicament he had placed himself in.

There are books, of course, that explain magic tricks, including Houdini's. The Jewish Museum refrains from those explanations, making the focus on the man rather than the act. I will follow suit, not because of some code of magicians but because explaining magic tricks is really boring.

Most people's reaction is, "Well, that's just a trick." Yes, it is. You know it's a trick going in, you watch for the trick, and you never see it. It's all about presentation, misdirection, showmanship and gall.

Houdini didn't need mystic robes or strange symbols of unknown origin. He always appeared as himself, often in a severe black suit. When he was to leap into the water fully manacled, he wore a sort of leotard, which had the advantage of showing off his admirable physique - he sold a little sex along with the mystification.

Later in his life, he devoted himself to exposing spiritualists, since they were using the same tricks that magicians had been using for years. My own belief - authorities differ on this interpretation - is that he secretly wanted to find the genuine article, so he could communicate with his late beloved mother.

He was born Erich Weiss in 1878, the son of a rabbi who had emigrated from Hungary. Weiss, unlike many vaudeville performers of his time, never made a secret of his background. He took a stage name because that's what magicians did, often appending "the magnificent" or some such. Houdini took his name from Robert-Houdin, a great 19th century French magician. His first name, Harry, was taken from his boyhood nickname Eri, short for Erich.

It is possible to see in his story the classic first-generation immigrant story: Up from poverty, making his own way in the world, inventing something - in this case, himself - that would make the world gasp with wonder. His genius was partly in his ability to raise expectations.

He would go to a new town - he worked the Orpheum Vaudeville circuit in his early days - and arrange, say, for the police to lock him in their most secure cell and then wait outside while he freed himself. He would, of course, invite the press. When he strolled out, as he inevitably did - Amazement! Disbelief! Publicity!

The museum show itself is at once a tribute to Houdini, complete with the very milk can - yes, ladies and gentlemen, the very milk can - from which he would escape. Also on display is one of his own straitjackets, a leather number with rivets on the shoulder pads. There are movies to watch, from newsreel footage of his outdoor exploits to films, generally awful, that he appeared in.

Also on view are posters and a scene from "Houdini" starring Tony Curtis (born Bernard Herschel Schwartz - reinventions within reinventions), which gave the false impression that Houdini had died performing his water torture trick. Not true; he died from a punch in the stomach. He did have a reputation for asking people to punch him in the stomach, because he could make his abs rock hard, but he wasn't ready when a backstage fanboy gave him a hard right to the belly. Peritonitis set in, and that was that.

All of this and more is in this wonderful show, which is about a part of American history that many people have forgotten - even though the name Houdini continues to be recognized by people who know nothing else about him. The dream of escape is eternal; Houdini proved that dreams could come true - with maybe just a little hanky-panky.

Ladies and gentlemen, today in this very space, a man will attempt to write sentences in the English language.

Behold yon simpering dame whose face between her forks presages snow, that minces virtue, and does shake the head to hear of pleasure's jcarroll@sfchronicle.com.